Frequently Asked Questions

How does eth.events help me as a smart contract developer save development time?

Simply plug into the eth.events API to get access to the Ethereum mainnet. You do not need to setup your own index or wait on your web3 client to fully sync.

My business case needs blockchain data. How can you help me to monitor my KPIs?

Just contact us via email at contact@eth.events. Our consultants can help you distill your needs into specific blockchain queries. We arrange the results in a customized dashboard for you. And we guarantee our service & support availability with an SLA according to your needs.

Which questions can eth.events answer?

What does eth.events do?

Eth.events indexes blocks, transactions, logs and human-readable smart contract events from the ethereum mainnet. This way, you could answer any questions you like, such as:

Total creation and destruction of DAI stablecoins during the last week?

Get a list of all ERC20 token transfers on December 17th?

Get the total fees paid in the 0x protocol month-by-month?

Total amount of token X deposited in the Raiden Network in the last 24 hours?

Cryptokitties “Birth” events over time? [only if you actually care about cats…]

Feel free to contact us if you are wondering about how to extract certain information!

Can I rely on your data to be available long-term for my project or use case?

Absolutely! We are here to stay and committed to backing up service availability via SLAs if needed. Plus we plan on open source our code, so that you could also choose to set up independently.

How to use eth.events?

How can I start using the eth.events API?

Just sign up to get your free API key. Then check our documentation on how to get started – and feel free to contact us for any questions, support and feedback. We’d love to talk to you!

Can I install eth.events locally?

No. Eth.events is not meant to be installed locally. You can access the index via our ElasticSearch REST-API using tools like CURL, Postman or your preferred programming language.

How does eth.events compare to…

How does eth.events compare to a block explorer like Etherscan?

First of all – we really like the guys from Etherscan, as they are providing an invaluable service to the Ethereum community!

A block explorer like Etherscan provides first and foremost a web front-end for users to make ad-hoc requests about the current state of blocks, single transactions or individual account balances.

Eth.events however is focused on providing a flexible API for developers and businesses.While Etherscan also has an API, they enforce usage limitations. Eth.events provides a non limited basic query level for free but also offers paid Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for enterprise users that require contractual piece of mind and additional services for their business needs.

How does eth.events compare to Alethio?

Alethio is a Consensys formation working on Ethstats.io which is supposed to become the blockchain explorer of the future. While public details during the ongoing development are sparse, the team produced some pretty creative graphs e.g. regarding the Gnosis token auction. We really like the teams attitude about providing neutral, objective information to provide transparency for the community whenever they share some “archaeological analysis”.

While eth.events is not striving to become another block explorer, we share some of the target groups. If you are a ĐApp developer interested in actionable insight into the events of your smart contract project, you can get your free API key here today.

We can also help you with consulting on your individual needs regarding data extraction and visualization or index your private blockchain – just email us at contact@eth.events.

Our Elasticsearch index updates the data in real-time as new blocks get appended to the Ethereum blockchain.

We also provide an API to access the extensive data (about 1.7 TB for Ethereum Mainnet as of November 2018) on our hosted infrastructure. But with us, you use the Elastic Query DSL for your queries and visualize it with the many data science / business intelligence products that offer Elasticsearch integration. Currently we are also planning to expand our service to provide a SQL-based API soon.

But most importantly – we help you to make sense of all this data! This starts by enriching the raw data with human readable labels for addresses, contract names and their actual event identifiers. We do this by leveraging the Application Binary Interface (ABI) of smart contracts – be it either standard token contracts like ERC-20 or ERC-721 or your individual contract code on a private permissioned blockchain. Plus you can reach us anytime with your questions and we are happy to help you find what is the relevant data in the blockchain for your respective use case.

How does eth.events compare to Amberdata?

Amberdata has a really slick website front-end with charts that can mostly also be downloaded or shared as graphics. The data provides insight into the infrastructure level (nodes, block times etc.), blocks and transactions as well as tokens. You can register to generate your own dashboard based on the provided charts. However, their API is still in private beta, so you cannot flexibly integrate the blockchain data into your ĐApp etc.

On the contract level they have recently added a generic security audit and can show a timeline of contract events.

Using the eth.events API you can query all smart contract events, and then aggregate & visualize the data any way you like. Since we are based on an Elasticsearch index, you can use any compatible standard software to plot your charts – for example Kibana, Grafana or also the hosted Datadog service. You can also do ad-hoc queries using e.g. IPython / Jupyter Notebooks or just curl or Postman.

Amberdata currently supports the Ethereum Mainnet and Rinkeby testnet as well as the main- and test-net of AION blockchain.

Eth.events has indexed all public Ethereum testnets (Rinkeby, Kovan, Robsten) besides Mainnet as well as Ethereum-based private chains like Tobalaba from the Energy Web Foundation.

How does eth.events compare to Vulcanize?

Vulcanize is a set of tools that make it easier for developers to write application-specific indexes and caches for ĐApps built on ethereum. One core element is VulcanizeDB, which can store the data extracted from an Ethereum node in a PostgreSQL database so that you may query it with SQL.

These tools help you with the task of reading fast from the Ethereum blockchain – but you would still need to run your own archive node in the network. This is part of the service eth.events provides so that you do not have to set up and maintain any infrastructure yourself.

Our complete enterprise stack also does the ETL work for you: draining the data from the Geth / Parity node, translating to and enriching it with human readable information (e.g. via smart contract ABIs) and putting it in a fast Elasticsearch index. Via our API you can use the Elasticsearch Query DSL to get the data relevant for your use case straight away and focus on your core business.

How does eth.events compare to The Graph?

The Graph is a protocol for storing and accessing selected Ethereum data in a decentralized way for querying. More specifically, the Graph Node is an open source Rust implementation that event-sources the Ethereum blockchain to deterministically update a datastore (PostgreSQL on IPFS), which can then be queried via the GraphQL endpoint.

The three main components Graph node, CLI and TypeScript library are dual-licensed under the MIT license and the Apache License v2.0.

To build and use The Graph, you need to have several things running on your system: Rust, PostgreSQL, an IPFS node and a local Ethereum node.

Being a necessity, eth.events at present functions as a trusted intermediary. But gives you the benefit of not having to run any node infrastructure yourself at all. Instead, you can focus on building your ĐApp. We’ll also handle the sometimes painful technical details like chain reorganizations automatically for you, so that you can trust the provided data being reorg-safe.

Furthermore, as a specialized Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider, we actually have the whole Ethereum blockchain (and all test nets) readily available in our index and update the data in real-time. In this way you do not need to worry about defining a specific subgraph with a manifest, creating a GraphQL schema and writing mappings for the different data types. Instead, you can simply start querying the blockchain using the Elastic Query DSL via our API.

How does eth.events compare to Infura?

Infura and eth.events have several things in common: We both provide infrastructure for your decentralized applications so you can focus on the features. It does not matter whether you develop on the Ethereum Mainnet or on what testnet, as all are covered. And the Ethereum clients Geth and Parity are used in tandem for robustness and resiliency.

Also the respective APIs of both Infura and eth.events are free to use for developers, and customized business solutions are on offer.

What is very different though is the focus regarding use cases: the nodes by Infura are fully active network participants that write to the blockchain (or IPFS). You access these nodes via the API compatible with the standard JSON-RPC API and popular web3 libraries.

Eth.events however is a service you use in order to read from the blockchain fast and reliably. Our API lets you interact with our Elasticsearch index that in turn is filled and updated in real-time by our network nodes. Therefore with eth.events, you never have to worry about running and maintaining your own archive node. You can simply query the data for your specific use case right away.

How does eth.events compare to Quickblocks?

Quickblocks is a collection of mostly open source C++ software libraries, applications, and command-line tools in alpha stage designed to give you quicker access to the data provided by an Ethereum node. In a manner very similar to the way web3.js works, QuickBlocks sits between a local or remote Ethereum node, and delivers the Ethereum data to your application. By locally caching the data, it is a lot faster than by retrieving it via the web3.js path. It also generates clear text labels from supplied smart contract ABIs.

This form of ABI interpretation is a feature shared with eth.events. However we collected over 40.000 smart contract ABIs already for you (incl. all ERC-20 and ERC-721 standard contracts).

To make the job of a ĐApp developer even easier, this enriched blockchain data sits in an Elasticsearch index that is easily queryable via an API based on the Elasticsearch Query DSL.

Being an enterprise grade database index this is lightning fast and therefore perfectly suited for reading datasets of any shape or form from the blockchain. And the best part: you do not even have to worry about running and maintaining or connecting to any archive node yourself. We provide this for both the Ethereum Mainnet as well as all test networks as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), with the basic tier free for any ĐApp developers.

Other questions

Who is running eth.events?

Anyblock Analytics GmbH is the creator and operator of eth.events. It is based on a proof of concept by Konrad Feldmeier.